Atonement (film)
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Films
| Atonement | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Joe Wright |
| Produced by | Tim Bevan Eric Fellner Paul Webster Ian McEwan |
| Written by | Ian McEwan Christopher Hampton |
| Starring | James McAvoy Keira Knightley Brenda Blethyn Saoirse Ronan |
| Music by | Dario Marianelli |
| Cinematography | Seamus McGarvey |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures Focus Features Working Title Films Studio Canal |
| Release date(s) | December 7, 2007 ( limited) January 4, 2008 ( wide) |
| Running time | 130 min. |
| Country | UK France |
| Language | English French |
| Budget | $30 million |
| Gross revenue | Domestic $38,158,571 Worldwide $93,626,784 |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Atonement is a 2007 drama film adaptation of Ian McEwan's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, directed by Joe Wright and based on a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. It was produced by Working Title Films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in Great Britain and France, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Distributed worldwide by Universal Studios, with minor releases through other divisions, the film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 7, 2007, and on limited release in North America on December 7, 2007, and wide release January 4, 2008.
As the opening film of the 2007 Venice International Film Festival, Atonement made Wright at the age of 35 the youngest director ever to open this prestigious festival. The film also opened the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival.
On January 22, 2008, the movie was nominated for 7 Oscars for the 80th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Best Supporting Actress.
Plot
The film comprises four parts, corresponding to the four parts of the novel. Some scenes are shown several times from different perspectives.
Briony Tallis ( Saoirse Ronan), 13, an aspiring writer, and her adult sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley), are two of three children of a well-to-do English family. Robbie Turner ( James McAvoy), about Cecilia's age, is the housekeeper's son, close to the family. After winning a grammar school scholarship, he was educated, like Cecilia, at Cambridge University—his fees paid by Cecilia's father—and is headed for medical school, but is spending the summer gardening on the Tallis estate. Tallis cousin Lola Quincey ( Juno Temple), age 15, and her younger twin brothers are visiting the family amidst their parents' divorce. Leon, the girls' brother, brings home a friend, Paul Marshall ( Benedict Cumberbatch), who owns a chocolate factory that is acquiring a contract to produce army rations. They all gather in the Tallis home to celebrate Briony's birthday.
The sexually naive Briony, who has a crush on Robbie and has been the object of his anger earlier in the day, observes a significant moment of sexual tension between Robbie and her sister and misinterprets it as aggression by Robbie; in fact, Robbie is in love with Cecilia, and she with him, but they do not know how to tell each other of their feelings. Robbie writes drafts of letters of explanation to Cecilia, including one very explicit, erotically charged version. On his way to join the Tallis family celebration, he asks Briony to deliver his letter but realizes that it is the erotic note he did not intend to send. Briony reads the letter and again misinterprets its meaning; she decides that Robbie is a dangerous sex maniac. When Cecilia reads the letter, she realises that she has deep feelings for Robbie but fears that Briony will reveal the letter's embarrassing contents.
Shortly afterwards, a shocked Briony encounters Cecilia and Robbie in a sexual embrace in the library and assumes that Robbie is assaulting her sister. At dinner, Briony is verbally aggressive towards Robbie, but before she can accuse him, the adults notice that the twins have not appeared. Briony finds a note saying that they are running away to their home. The party breaks up to search for the twins, and Briony also sets out to find them. In the dark, she stumbles upon a tuxedoed man who appears to be raping Lola. Though Lola, apparently traumatized, claims not to know who her assailant was, because he covered her eyes, Briony insists that he was Robbie, while Cecilia refuses to believe he is guilty. When Robbie later returns from the search, with the twins safely in tow, he is arrested and jailed, based solely on Briony's testimony.
The story then moves ahead four years, to the opening phases of the Second World War. Robbie, having been convicted but released from prison on condition that he enlist, is a private in the British Expeditionary Force and is hiding in a French attic with two fellow soldiers cut off from their units during the German invasion of France. Here the dénouement of the rape accusation is shown in dialogue and flashback. Before his deployment, he was reunited with Cecilia in London, where they renewed their love, and he made a promise to return to her. Briony, also in London, where like Cecilia she has joined the nursing corps, has tried unsuccessfully to reach her sister. Cecilia has refused contact, blaming Briony for Robbie's imprisonment.
With his two companions, the wounded and very ill Robbie finally arrives at the beaches of Dunkirk, where he is waiting to be evacuated. He is told that all the soldiers are to leave the next day and falls asleep. Shortly thereafter, at the hospital where she is a probationer nurse, Briony experiences the horror of the evacuation. In one scene, a mortally wounded French soldier dies while she is attempting to comfort him.
After seeing a newsreel showing chocolate magnate Paul Marshall profiting from the war, Briony attends the wedding of Marshall and her cousin Lola. By this time, Briony, who is still attempting to write, has come to understand that she misinterpreted her sister's relationship with Robbie and that she made a disastrous mistake by accusing him. She now knows that the man who was having sex with Lola on that night was Paul Marshall and that Lola could not admit it. On that day, Briony summons up the courage to visit Cecilia's flat and apologizes to her directly, recanting her accusation. Robbie, apparently having been evacuated from Dunkirk, emerges from Cecilia's bedroom, awakened by the commotion of their argument, and he angrily confronts Briony. Cecilia calms him, but the couple demand that Briony immediately tell her family and the authorities the truth, so that his name can be cleared. Robbie insists that she write to him (without 'embellishment or adjectives') precisely what happened, and why she did it, and to give the details to a solicitor. While Cecilia and Robbie assume that a certain servant boy was the culprit, Briony reveals that she knows it was Paul Marshall, who, now having married Lola, cannot be implicated in a court of law by his wife. This information calls into question whether the incident was a rape at all or whether this was yet another misinterpretation by Briony, supported by the 15-year-old Lola, who would not have wanted to reveal that the sexual encounter was consensual.
The film finally shifts to an elderly Briony being interviewed about her latest novel, called "Atonement". During this interview, Briony reveals that she is dying of vascular dementia, and that this novel is her last, but that she began it first. Briony admits that, while the novel is autobiographical, the ending of the story has been significantly changed. In reality, she says, she never could summon the courage to see her sister and tell the truth. Robbie had died of septic shock on the last night of the evacuation at Dunkirk ( 1 June 1940), and Cecilia was drowned in October of 1940, in the Balham tube station disaster during the Blitz. Briony expresses deep remorse and says that this novel, to which she gave an ending different from the reality, had been her chance to give her sister and Robbie the hope and the happiness that they had deserved—and that she had stolen from them. Her schoolgirl crush on Robbie is revealed, as is the fact that her jealousy of his attentions to her sister colored her inability to tell truth from fiction, leading her to lie in her accusations. The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13-year-old child, which she has always regretted.
The film closes with a scene of a simple, joyful moment that Cecilia and Robbie might have had, if things had played out differently. The background is taken from a postcard of an English cliff-side beach that Cecilia had once sent to Robbie.
Cast
- James McAvoy as Robert "Robbie" Turner
- Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis
- Brenda Blethyn as Grace Turner
- Saoirse Ronan as Briony Tallis, age 13
- Romola Garai as Briony Tallis, age 18
- Vanessa Redgrave as Briony Tallis, age 77
- Harriet Walter as Emily Tallis
- Juno Temple as Lola Quincey
- Felix and Charlie von Simson as Pierrot and Jackson Quincey
- Patrick Kennedy as Leon Tallis
- Alfie Allen as Danny Hardman
- Michelle Duncan as Fiona Maguire
- Benedict Cumberbatch as Paul Marshall
- Anthony Minghella as Interviewer
Production
The film was produced by Working Title Films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in Great Britain and France.
Locations
Locations for the filming included the seafront in Redcar; Streatham Hill, South London (standing in for Balham, Cecilia's new home after becoming estranged from her family); Stokesay near Craven Arms; and Grimsby.
All the exteriors and interiors of the Tallis family home were filmed at Stokesay Court, Onibury, Shropshire, and chosen from the pages of an old copy of Country Life magazine. The Victorian mansion was built in 1889 by glove manufacturer John Derby-Allcroft and is still privately owned. London locations included Whitehall and Bethnal Green Town Hall, latter being used for a 1939 tea house scene, as well as St John's, Smith Square, Westminster, which served as location for Lola's wedding. The scenes from the 1940 Balham station were filmed in the former Piccadilly Line station of Aldwych, which was closed in the 1990s. Parts of the St. Thomas's hospital ward interior and corridors were filmed at Park Place, Henley-on-Thames; the exterior of the hospital actually being University College London.
While the third portion of Atonement was entirely filmed at the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, the beach and cliff scene first shown on the postcard and later seen towards the end of the film were filmed at the Seven Sisters, Sussex, more precisely at Cuckmere Haven which is incidently quite near to Roedean School which Cecilia was said to have attended. The scenes of the French countryside were filmed in Coates and Gedney Drove End, Lincolnshire; Walpole St. Andrew and Denver, Norfolk; and in March and Pymore, in Cambridgeshire. The scenes shot in Redcar include the seafront as a war-torn Dunkirk and a scene in the local cinema on the promenade.
Distribution
The film opened the 2007 Venice International Film Festival, making Wright, at the age of 35, the youngest director ever to be honored so. The film also opened the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival. Atonement was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 7 September 2007, and in North America on 7 December 2007. Worldwide distribution was managed by Universal Studios, with minor releases through other divisions.
Reception
Critical reception
The film has received generally positive reviews. As of January 18, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes records that 82% of 171 critics gave the film positive reviews, with a consensus that the film's "strong performances, brilliant cinematography, and lovely score make for a very successful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel." On the other review aggregator, Metacritic records an average score of 85%, based on 36 reviews. Roger Ebert gave it a four star review saying that the movie was "one of the year's best films, a certain best picture nominee." The film was listed as number 3 on Empire Magazine's top 25 films of 2007.
Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #4. Corliss praised the film as "first beguiling, then devastating", and singled out Saoirse Ronan as “terrific as the confused 12-year-old.”
On December 13, 2007 it received 7 Golden Globe nominations, more than any other film nominated for the 65th Golden Globe Awards. On January 13, 2007, the film won 2 Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture Drama.
On January 16, 2008, the film received 14 BAFTA nominations for the 61st British Academy Film Awards including Best Film, Best British Film and Best Director.
On January 22, 2008, Atonement received 7 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
Top ten lists
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.
- 1st - Best Romance, Rotten Tomatoes
- 1st - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
- 1st - Lou Lumenick, New York Post
- 2nd - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone,
- 3rd - Empire
- 4th - Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
- 4th - Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
- 4th - Richard Corliss, TIME magazine
- 4th - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
- 4th - Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club
- 7th - Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club
- 8th - James Berardinelli, ReelViews
- 8th - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club
- 8th - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
- 9th - Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
- 10th - Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun
- 10th - Noel Murray, The A.V. Club
Box office
The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 7, 2007, and it has grossed £11,557,134. The film was also given a limited release in North America on December 7, 2007, and it grossed $784,145 in its opening weekend, posting a per-theatre average of $24,504 in 32 theaters. As of January 30, 2008, the film has grossed $38,158,571 in the US and $93,626,784 worldwide.
Awards
Wins
Atonement has been named among the Top 10 Films of 2007 by the Austin Film Critics Association, the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Online, the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
- Houston Film Critics Society Awards: Top 10 Films, Best Original Score ( Dario Marianelli)
- 65th Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Original Score - Motion Picture ( Dario Marianelli)
- Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards: Best Youth Performance - Female ( Saoirse Ronan)
- Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards: Top 10 Films, Best Cinematography ( Seamus McGarvey), Best Original Score ( Dario Marianelli), Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role ( Saoirse Ronan)
- San Diego Film Critics Society Awards: Top 7 Films, Best Editing (Paul Tothill)
- Satellite Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton)
Nominations
- 80th Academy Awards: Best Motion Picture of the Year (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Saoirse Ronan), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton), Achievement in Art Direction (Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer), Achievement in Cinematography (Seamus McGarvey), Achievement in Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran), Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures - Original Score (Dario Marianelli).
- 12th Art Directors Guild Awards: Excellence in Production Design for a Feature Film - Period Film (Sarah Greenwood)
- 22nd American Society of Cinematographers Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases ( Seamus McGarvey)
- 61st British Academy Film Awards: Best Film (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster), Best British Film (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster, Joe Wright, Christopher Hampton), Best Director (Joe Wright), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton), Best Leading Actor (James McAvoy), Best Leading Actress (Keira Knightley), Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Music (Dario Marianelli), Best Cinematography (Seamus McGarvey), Best Editing (Paul Tothill), Best Production Design (Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer), Best Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran), Best Sound (Danny Hambrook, Paul Hamblin, Catherine Hodgson), Best Make Up and Hair (Ivana Primorac).
- Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards: Best Picture, Best Director ( Joe Wright), Best Supporting Actress ( Vanessa Redgrave), Best Composer ( Dario Marianelli), Best Young Actress ( Saoirse Ronan)
- 10th Costume Designers Guild Awards: Excellence in Period Costume Design for Film ( Jacqueline Durran)
- Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards: Best Supporting Actress ( Saoirse Ronan),
- 65th Golden Globe Awards: Best Director - Motion Picture ( Joe Wright), Best Performance by an Actor for a Motion Picture - Drama ( James McAvoy), Best Performance by an Actress for a Motion Picture - Drama (Keira Knightley), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture ( Saoirse Ronan), Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (Christopher Hampton)
- International Film Music Critics Association Awards: Film Score of the Year (Dario Marianelli), Composer of the Year (Dario Marianelli), Best Original Score - Drama (Dario Marianelli), Film Music Composition of the Year (Elegy for Dunkirk, Dario Marianelli)
- London Film Critics Circle Awards: The Attenborough Award for British Film of the Year, British Director of the Year ( Joe Wright), British Actor of the Year ( James McAvoy), British Actress of the Year (Keira Knightley), British Actress in a Supporting Role ( Vanessa Redgrave), British Actress in a Supporting Role ( Saoirse Ronan), Screenwriter of the Year (Christopher Hampton), British Breakthrough – Acting ( Saoirse Ronan)
- 55th Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards: Best Sound Editing - Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR in a Foreign Feature Film (Becki Ponting, Peter Burgis)
- Online Film Critics Society Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress ( Saoirse Ronan), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton), Best Cinematography ( Seamus McGarvey), Best Editing (Paul Tothill), Best Score ( Dario Marianelli)
- Satellite Awards: Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (Keira Knightley), Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Drama ( Saoirse Ronan), Best Costume Design ( Jacqueline Durran), Best Original Score ( Dario Marianelli)
- St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress ( Saoirse Ronan), Best Cinematography Runner-Up ( Seamus McGarvey), Best Screenplay (Christopher Hampton), Best Score ( Dario Marianelli)
- Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director ( Joe Wright), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton)
- USC Libraries Scripter Award: Best Realization of a Book Adapted to Film (Christopher Hampton, screenwriter; Ian McEwan, author)
- Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards: Best Film, Best Director (Joe Wright), Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton), Best Art Direction (Sarah Greenwood), Best Breakthrough Performance (Saoirse Ronan)